The intermezzo from the opera Cavalleria rusticana, with its tense calm before the storm, is the one piece by Pietro Mascagni that you might hear in an orchestral concert. The works unearthed for Gianandrea Noseda's new collection range from a boisterous 1887 waltz (published in Berlin as Mein erster Walzer) to the rather effortfully imposing L'apoteosi della cicogna (The Apotheosis
of the Stork) from the 1930 portmanteau ballet Fiori del Brabante. The most substantial item is better balanced, a suite, here recorded for the first time, from the 1902 incidental music for Hall Caine's play, The Eternal City. Three vocal items (an Ave Maria, a Padre nostro and a Serenade) are sung in rather maudlin style by tenor Luciano Ganci. A disc to satisfy the inveterately curious. url.ie/f1f2